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This is the ninth in a series of articles designed to familiarize readers with Jewish communities throughout the state.
Many if not most of the about 4,000 residents of Minocqua know of Jerry Woolpy — partly because he is, as he put it, a local “absent-minded professor who loses his dog and his keys.” (In fact, he is a retired professor of biology and psychology, who taught at a university in Indiana.)
But he has another claim to fame in this north-central Wisconsin town. He is the only known knowledgeable and practicing Jew who lives there — and probably, he said, the only one in a 20-mile radius from his home.
So whenever the local newspaper has a question about Judaism or Israel, “they call me.” Moreover, he has written articles about those subjects and others, and the paper’s editors “print almost everything I send them.”
As a result, “a lot of people know me that I don’t know,” and even recognize him on the street, Woolpy said.
Woolpy may be an exceptionally public figure, but he is not unique.
The 2001 American Jewish Yearbook estimates that some 300 Wisconsin Jews live in “other places” outside the state’s larger cities with Jewish communities. Some live in towns or rural areas where they may be the only Jewish individuals in a population of hundreds or thousands.
The Chronicle recently interviewed eight of these people from all over the state to find out what it’s like to live in such a situation. Naturally, they don’t constitute a community, as such. But most of them do have a few common traits in their personalities and lifestyles.
‘ Heaven on earth’
For one, while the most of American Jews are urbanites, this group loves to live in small towns and rural areas; and many of them came to escape from more populous areas.
“Living in a small town is a wonderful experience,” said supplier development engineer Aimee Siegler, a New Jersey native. She lives with her non-Jewish husband, Ron, and their new baby in Centerville, north of La Crosse. She said she particularly enjoys the peace; and mentioned that when her husband’s brother from Milwaukee visited, “he couldn’t believe how quiet it was.”
But high values are as much an attraction as low ambient decibels. Small town life “keeps you focused on the things that are important,” said clinical therapist “J. Goldstein,” who lives in a town of about 1,000 people in the area between Manitowoc and Door County. (Because he has helped convict dangerous criminals for a county’s criminal justice system, he asked that his and his family’s identities be disguised and his town not specified.)
The important things include “being a family and raising children, actually teaching them, trying to incorporate aspects of Jewish life that sometimes get lost or taken for granted when you come from a big congregation,” said Goldstein, who was raised in the Chicago-area and is active in Congregation Cnesses Israel in Green Bay.
In fact, Mark A. Kastel, 47, another Chicago native, said he found “a connection and greater meaning in life” through living in the La Farge area, east-southeast of La Crosse.
Kastel works as a farm policy analyst and business-cooperative development consultant, and he owns and works a farm. He walks over his land every morning, he said, and as he watches the manifestations of nature, “it is hard not to believe in God when surrounded by this magic every day…. I say I live in heaven on earth.”
Which doesn’t mean it is impossible to be the only Jews in town, live close to nature and still be in reach of, and active in, a large Jewish community.
Architect Nanci Miller, salesman Donald Schaum and their son Yari, 7, know of only one other Jewish person besides themselves living in Hubertus. They chose this area to live close to a lake; moreover, Glacier Hills County Park “is basically our backyard,” said Miller.
But they are close enough to the Milwaukee area to belong to Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue in Mequon, send Yari to the Milwaukee Jewish Day School and even keep a kosher kitchen without too much hassle, they said.
This group also seems to appreciate the value of having a small but close-knit Jewish community, as much as do Jewish residents in small cities like La Crosse, Wausau or Racine — cities that have synagogues to which some of these Jews drive to attend services or provide training for their children.
Minnesota native ViAnn Johnson — 53, a Jew-by-choice and probably the only Jew in Tomah, a town of about 7,000 people east-northeast of La Crosse — said “the need to belong to a community” was one feature that attracted her to Judaism in the first place.
“It’s really something in our society [to have] a sense of belonging to a group outside of work, a deep-seated need to have a spiritual bond — it enhances every aspect of your life,” she said.
‘ Everything is a shlep’
Keeping this sense of community, however, requires effort for these people, who have to drive long distances to go to the nearest synagogue — or even just to the grocery store.
Johnson is a member of Congregation Sons of Abraham in La Crosse. The distance was one factor preventing her from participating as much as she would like to in synagogue events, such as a recent bat mitzvah ceremony for a group of adult women.
For Roberta Levinson, a native of Hudson, N.Y., and an attorney living in Twin Lakes, east of Kenosha, “Everything is a shlep…. My whole life is driving,” including a 45-minute to one hour drive to Beth Hillel Temple in Kenosha, where her three children attend religious school. “I would love to be a little closer [to the synagogue] to participate a little more,” she said.
One way some of this group compensates is to bring some aspects of Judaism or Jewish knowledge to their non-Jewish neighbors. Several have spoken to local public schools and churches.
Goldstein’s wife, who is not Jewish but is planning to convert, can do this directly as she is a teacher at the local public elementary school, which their three children attend.
Moreover, the family hosts Chanukah parties — complete with a “dreidl marathon in the basement” — to which they invite their children’s friends and classmates. These have become so locally famous that children and adults ask to be invited, she said.
Woolpy, a member of Mount Sinai Congregation in Wausau, also hosts Chanukah parties, Passover seders and Sabbath dinners for his non-Jewish friends, and once presented a model seder at a Methodist church. He often writes the services himself “to try to make it relevant, to try to get people to think about why these holidays are celebrated.”
This group also, apparently, has encountered little or no serious anti-Semitism, even though they frequently encounter people who have never met a Jew before.
“A lot of people are curious [and] I guess I’m something of an oddity,” said Siegler. “A lot of the time, people are so unfamiliar [with Judaism] they just want to ask questions and learn.”
La Farge’s Kastel is visible in local and state politics and once ran unsuccessfully for the legislature. He said he has “been vilified … with such a degree of ferocity” by some of his opponents that he has wondered if some anti-Semitism might be lurking behind it. He said he’s also noticed some people in an obviously biased way will characterize others — especially blacks or Amish — as “different.”
Still, even in the rough game of politics, Kastel said he has encountered little he could describe as overt anti-Semitism. Even the use of such phrases as “I jewed him down” is becoming less common, he said.
Another trait this group seems to share with many Jews who live in smaller Wisconsin communities is that, most, though not all, of them are or have been intermarried.
The intermarried couples with children are raising them Jewish with the support and cooperation of the non-Jewish spouses.
Siegler’s husband, Ron, is Catholic and is not interested in converting. “The decisions haven’t been easy,” she said, “but I think we have a strong enough relationship that we can discuss things and find what works for us. We seem to have a pretty good balance right now.”
Levinson’s husband, attorney Kim Lewis, participates in Beth Hillel activities, apparently without strain. “He refers to it as ‘our synagogue,’ not just mine or the kids’,” she said.
Of this group, only Woolpy and Kastel are currently single, and they have contrasting attitudes about the fact.
Woolpy has been married several times; and neither of his two children from his first marriage are Jews — though he said his granddaughter “talks about becoming Jewish.”
“A lot of Jews define success in terms of their children’s Judaism. I don’t buy that,” he said. “If Judaism is going to survive, it will on its own, not because it concerns itself with out-marriage and losing children and so forth. The ideas are going to count.”
But Kastel, who is divorced, said“the largest hardship in living here as a Jew” is the lack of single Jewish women. “Most people are coupled out here. It’s hard to live the kind of rich life on a farm that you want to without a partner.”
But “I’m not going to bump into anybody at the filling station in La Farge.” He regards it as “a challenge” to find someone at long distance, and “I’m not done innovating yet” at ways to do that.
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